Former United player authors his love of the game

TODD RUDOLF

Thursday

Sep 30, 2010 at 12:01 AMSep 30, 2010 at 9:03 AM

In just 20 years, Caileb Feik has gone from farmer, to football player, to armed service member and now to published author. Feik, who graduated from United in 2008, is the author of a novel about small-town football.

In just 20 years, Caileb Feik has gone from farmer, to football player, to armed service member and now to published author.

Feik attended Aledo High School before transferring to United before his junior year. While his school may have changed, one thing remained constant — his love of football.

Feik, a quarterback at Aledo, went on to have a successful career for the Red Storm as a running back and linebacker and earned himself an athletic scholarship to Iowa Wesleyan.

“He was a very intelligent kid who knew the game of football very well,” said Tim Engebretson, Feik’s coach at United. “He was an all-around kid who could do just about anything. He always had some deep thoughts about life.”

But his career as a college football player was short-lived. After training camp his freshman year, Feik quit the football team and attended Carl Sandburg College for a year.

“After I got the scholarship and started training camp, I knew college football wasn’t for me,” Feik said. “It was so much different than high school, which I truly loved playing. I just knew I wanted something new.”

Despite ending his career as a player, Feik’s love for the game remained strong, as did his other childhood hobby — creative writing. Upon graduating from United in 2008, Feik began writing a fictional story about a boy playing football in a small town. While Feik only planned to write a short story, the project soon became a full-fledged novel.

“I have always enjoyed writing ever since I was about 8 years old,” said Feik, now an intelligence analyst with the U.S. Army in Fort Hood, Texas. “So a couple of years ago I sat down and started writing about my love of high school football in general. It was supposed to be a short story, but as I wrote ideas kept popping out. Two years later I have a book.”

Feik planned to only make a few copies of the book, but after word got out, he was encouraged to publish it.

“I never planned on publishing it, but a decent amount of people wanted a copy so I figured I might as well put it out there and see what kind of buzz it gets,” Feik said. “I’m not expecting a best-seller, but I would like to see a few copies sell. Obviously I like the book and I feel strong about it. I hope it’s something that people who went to a small school can relate to.”

Feik’s book, “The Perfect Season,” is about a boy named Alex, a high school football player who has it all. But with all those perks come the pressures and responsibilities of being the most visible person in a small town that worships its football team. While fictional, Feik said his story is largely based on his personal experiences as a high school athlete.

“A lot of the book is based on my life,” Feik said. “The concepts are exaggerated to a certain extent, but the basis of the story, on and off the field, is from my personal experience as a player. Most football stories are about big programs and the little school doesn’t get a lot of attention. A lot of people don’t realize the pressure of playing at a small school. This shows the difficulty of that pressure while trying to figure out your priorities with family, friends and school.”

Feik even based some of the characters on people in his life and used certain football games and stadiums as details for the book.

“A lot of the football itself is based on my senior year at United,” said Feik, who wants to become an English teacher and — of course — high school football coach after he’s done serving in the Army. “In the book, the team plays in the state championship game. I used our game against Aledo as the premise. We were 2-4 and they were 6-0 and no one expected us to win, but we did. I also used several of the fields I played on. I kind of used my memory of those places as places where Alex played.”

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